I want to go there and I want to eat that

Bold Instead of Blue

You let time pass. That’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and realize you’re okay.
-Cheryl Strayed

I am feeling full of despair today. I am not sure why. Maybe it was simply time for a swell to pull me under again because I have been feeling above the waves—almost powerful and light-footed. Or maybe it’s because I dreamt about the cowboy. And not even in a good way, mind you, like where I actually saw his face or touched him. No my fanciful brain that can allow me dreams in which I am flying or am a Japanese Samurai apparently didn’t have the capacity for that—or maybe it did and it spared me. But no, all I dreamt was that he texted me, how are you doing, lover? It was summetime in Wyoming and I was driving through the mountains.

He had never called me lover in real life, for starters. And second of all, I was then mulling over his text in a playground with Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels. None of us were working out, but we were watching people workout and Bob was lazily smoking a cigarette while swinging back and forth on a swing. Also, preposterous, but that’s dreams for ya.

Anyway, maybe it’s that or maybe it’s not that. As the day drug on, and I say drug because sometime after lunch I wanted the day to be over and it simply didn’t listen—it is still today, unfortunately—I got progressively more fretful and blue.

And not just about the cowboy and his jarring absence in my life, but the whole of it and what to do with myself and my wild ways. I know, I know, there is no sense in worry. There really isn’t, but sometimes it attacks me from all sides and my shackles are down and I simply succumb to the onslaught.

I did for awhile. Succumb, you see. I laid there and felt bleak and panicky, bleak and panicky. And then I told myself to at least move. To do something in the arena of being bold instead of blue, and I liked that. I liked that very much. Bold instead of blue, I repeated to myself as I put socks on and then my boots, in which one of my boot zippers got stuck and split open halfway down my calf. I started cursing under my breath, saying to the boot, not now! Please not now! You are my only pair of cowboy-ish-boots and I can’t afford new ones! I felt manic and like the broken zipper might be the end of my day because it signaled everything in my life was truly broken shit.

Then rational me chimed in with firm motherly tones, suggesting I take off the boot, get the zipper unstuck and go from there.

I unstuck the zipper.

Oh okay, so alright then. No need to be psychotic, clearly. I put the boot back on, re-zippered it and all was well. I walked out the door into the crisp 14 degree day and meandered down the street to the library.

And here I sit. Still sort of craving a cry and a coffee. Though I’ve had plenty of coffee today and crying seems like a lot of work. Plus I am in public. And ya know, it’s a whole thing, with mascara and looking like swamp-thing and having people legitimately think I’m a crazy person.

Although, there has been this weird rattling above one of the light fixtures across from my table the entire time I have been here and it’s been irking me to no end. Instead of just moving to a new table, I chose to sit here and have fantasies about knocking down the terrorizing light, perhaps with a sword—I have been reading too much Highland lore—and then running up and down the aisles freely having just destroyed something. Maybe I am a crazy person.

Anyway. Attempting bold things like emailing people I know in Wyoming and asking them if they know cattle ranchers who want a handy gal to mend fences—I don’t know how to mend fences but they don’t know that—admittedly is improving my mood. As is the idea of breaking the light—of course I will not break the light; I am a civilized lady—and writing about my blues.

So maybe I will now go get that coffee and skip the cry. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

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That’s Me

"Have you fantasized about this moment as much as I have?" That's what I am going to say when I finally introduce myself to the Parisian croissant. Also if I don't ride the Trans-Siberian Railway soon, what's my life all about?
I like food, I like travel more. Or maybe vice versa. I can never decide.